“So in other words, woefully inadequate funding to address this issue,” Rouda said to Sullivan.

“We have the funding to address what we can physically do in the year,” replied Sullivan.

Earlier, Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Flint) testified. His Michigan district includes the former Wurtsmith Air Force base in Oscoda.

“Despite the Defense Department knowing about this PFAS chemical contamination at Wurtsmith since 2012, the military has failed to act quickly enough to stop contamination coming from the former Air Force base. As a result, PFAS continues to leech into the ground and surface water in Oscoda,” Kildee told the committee.

Kildee says Wurtsmith is one of 401 military sites identified as having known or potential releases of PFAS after decades of use of firefighting foam by the military.

“The Defense Department has only acted at 32 of those to clean-up contamination—less than 10 percent of all identified sites. Clearly, more needs to be done,” Kildee said.

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One of the contaminated PFAS sites first documented in Michigan was in Oscoda Township near the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base. The base has been closed for years. Firefighting training there used a fire suppressant foam containing a PFAS chemical.

State and federal officials say they expect to make headway this year on an underground chemical plume expanding from a former Air Force base.

The chemicals (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are linked to firefighter training on the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base. The firefighters used the foaming chemicals to extinguish jet fuel fires starting in the 1960s. The base closed in the 1990s. But while Wurtsmith’s been closed for decades, the chemical plume continues spreading through the groundwater into local wells and nearby open water.